Using Screencast-O-Matic

VSS provides a free Screencast-O-Matic Team Premier license to all V-VSS presenters to help you create and caption your video presentation. Screencast-O-Matic provides tools for recording, uploading, and captioning your video. Prior to Screencast-O-Matic, we recommend you review their Training Videos.

You are not required to use Screencast-O-Matic to create or caption your video. However, you will need Screencast-O-Matic to embed your captions into your video. See Captioning Your Video.

Installing Screencast-O-Matic

Instructions for installing and licensing Screencast-O-Matic.

  1. Go to https://screencast-o-matic.com/VSS2021. If this account is out of licenses, please use our secondary account at https://screencast-o-matic.com/VVSS2021. Same password for both accounts.
  2. Check I agree to the Terms of Service and click Launch the Recorder.
  3. This will initiate the download of the desktop application. You should see Launching… at the bottom of your screen. If the download does not start, click the Download link.
  4. Download, install, and launch the Screencast-O-Matic application.
  5. Enter the Team Plan Password that was emailed to you. If you don’t know the password, email us at .
  6. Screencast-O-Matic should now be running. See the instructions below for recording, captioning, and uploading your presentation video.

Recording Video

Screencast-O-Matic has a screen recorder for creating presentation videos. If you prefer, you may use another method for creating your video, and then import your video into Screencast-O-Matic for captioning (see Importing Video).

  1. In the Screencast-O-Matic desktop application, first set your recording options. Click the gear icon if the Record options are not visible.
    • Select Screen to record only your screen. Select Both to record your screen and you in an inset. If recording with you in an inset, drag the inset webcam window to the desired location.
    • To ensure that you keep within the time limit, set Max Time to 12 minutes for Talks and 6 minutes for Poster Tours.
    • Set the Size of the recording area. Try 720p first, then go to a higher resolution if you are not getting adequate quality.
    • Test your microphone by speaking and verifying that green bars appear following Narration.
    • Leave Computer Audio set to on ‘No’ to avoid recording computer sounds.
    • Click Preferences for other settings.
  2. Position the recording frame over the area you wish to record.
  3. Click the red Record button to start recording.
  4. Click Pause to stop recording.
  5. Click the Play icon to preview what you’ve recorded.
  6. Click Done to save your recording, or click the trashcan icon to start over.
  7. From the popup menu, click Edit Video. Here you can make changed to your video. Click Done after editing your video.
  8. Click Back to Recordings (upper left) and proceed to Captioning Your Video below.

Importing Video

If you don’t use Screencast-O-Matic to record your video, you can import a video from your computer.

  1. From the Screencast-O-Matic Recordings screen, click Import (upper right).
  2. Select a video file from your computer.
  3. The selected video is imported into the Screencast-O-Matic desktop application for editing and captioning.

Editing Your Video

  1. From the Screencast-O-Matic Recordings screen, select a video.
  2. Select Edit from the pop-up menu.
  3. You can crop your video and make other changes.
  4. Save your changes by clicking Done.

Captioning Your Video

All V-VSS presentation videos must be open captioned. Open Captioned means the captions are embedded into the video and are visible on a black bar below the video frame. Screencast-O-Matic’s auto-caption feature uses machine speech-to-text translation (which can have difficulty getting scientific terms correct), so you will need to carefully review your captions for accuracy.

An alternate method to captioning in Screencast-O-Matic is to use YouTube for captioning, and then import your video and captions into Screencast-O-Matic to generate your open-captioned video.

Be sure your video is in its final state before captioning. Making changes to your video after you caption it could result in having to restart the captioning process.

IMPORTANT: Captioning can take time, so don’t leave it to the last minute.

Using Screencast-O-Matic to Caption Your Video

  1. From the Screencast-O-Matic Recordings screen, select a video.
  2. Click the CC (Closed Caption) icon (lower right).
  3. Select Speech-to-Text (EN-US), then click Start.
  4. Screencast-O-Matic will start to auto-caption your video.
  5. Wait until auto-captioning is done. You can verify progress by scrolling to the bottom of the Captions Text sidebar.
  6. Review the captions in the Captions Text sidebar and make corrections.
  7. Click OK to save your captions.
  8. Click Back to Recordings (upper left) and proceed to Publishing Your Video File below.

Using YouTube to Caption Your Video

Many have found the speech-to-text functionality of YouTube to be superior to Screencast-O-Matic. Here are instructions on how to import YouTube-based captions into Screencast-O-Matic.

  1. Upload your video to YouTube. Don’t forget to change the video’s visibility setting to Private or Hidden.
  2. YouTube will need some time to add subtitles/captions to the video. This may take half an hour or even multiple hours.
  3. You know when the captions are available when the subtitle icon appears at the bottom of your video.
  4. You will need software or another website to download the subtitle. For example, copy-paste the URL of the YouTube video to https://savesubs.com/ and click on “Extract and Download”. I recommend downloading the captions in .srt format, a universally supported caption format. An alternative option is to download the caption using the YouTube Video Editor, but this outputs in .sbv format and I have not tested whether this can be imported by Screencast-O-Matic. Another alternative is to use offline software to download the YouTube captions.
  5. Import the downloaded/exported .srt file into Screencast-O-Matic. You can now check the text for mistakes.

Publishing Your Video File

To complete the video process, save your captioned video file to your computer, and then upload it to your MyVSS Account.

  1. From the Screencast-O-Matic Recordings screen, select a video.
  2. Cick Save as Video File from the Options menu (lower right).
  3. Set your publishing options:
    1. Type must be ‘MP4’.
    2. Enter a Filename.
    3. Enter the Folder your video file will be saved to.
    4. Indicate if you want your screen Cursor to appear in your video.
    5. Set Open Captions to English.
    6. For Quality, try ‘Normal’ first as this makes for a smaller file size, which will load and play faster on the website.
  4. Click Publish.
  5. After the video is saved to your computer, play it to verify the quality and that the captions are embedded. Verify that your video does not exceed the time limit.

Uploading Your Video

After you complete your captioned video, you must upload it to your MyVSS Account. For instructions, see Uploading Your Presentation Files. Presentation Uploads open on April 19 and close on May 7. Video files must be in MP4 format and be less than 2GB in size for upload.

You must upload your FINAL presentation files to your MyVSS Account no later than May 7.

More Information

Also see see Presenter Instructions and Preparing Your Presentation.